Made Note Quotes & Sayings

although it may seem obsessive I began noticing things and made note of it, knowing what I knew gave us an advantage. — Charon Lloyd-Roberts

The number of strokes to the inch controls the pitch of the note: the more, the higher the pitch; the fewer, the lower the pitch, the size of the stroke controls the loudness ... the tone quality is the most difficult element to control, it is made by the shape of the strokes. — Norman McLaren

So how many tattoos do you have exactly?" she asked as Travis met her at the front of her car. It was a question she'd been dying to ask but she couldn't believe she'd just blurted it out all of a sudden. What was it about this man that made her so nervous that she spoke before she thought?
He'd been blowing on the top of the travel mug that she'd let him use, but he stopped and faced her, his eyes darkening. "I'll let you find out on your own." There was a sensual note in his voice that she felt all the way to her toes. — Katie Reus

Well," her mother said, looking at the engine, "at least that's still there."
"Do you know anything about engines?" Stephanie asked.
"That's why I have a husband, so I don't have to. Engines and shelves, that's why men were invented."
Stephanie made a mental note to learn about engines before she turned eighteen. She wasn't too fussed about the shelves. — Derek Landy

I made a mental note to buy stock in the Iraqi padlock company. — Jack Coughlin

Awkward, like when a mad aunt starts up about Jesus at the dinner table. As Septimus showed him to the door, the sergeant replaced his hat and said quietly, "A cruel piece of mischief-making, looks like. I reckon it's about time to bury the hatchet against Fritz. All a filthy business, but there's no need for pranks like this. I'd keep it under your hat, the note. Don't want to encourage copycats." He shook hands with Septimus and made his way up the long, gum-lined drive. Back in his study, Septimus put a hand on Hannah's shoulder. "Come on, girlie, chin up. Mustn't let this get the better of you." "But — M.L. Stedman

Evan chuckled and shook his head. "I should have known it would be another owl. What is it with you and owls? I'm surrounded by the bloody things. There's more of them than the spider plants."
"Don't listen to him," Rai said, standing and swivelling around to take in all his menagerie. Owlery? I made a mental note to Google the collective noun for owls later. "You're all precious snowflakes, my lovelies. — Josephine Myles

I put the photo in an album called Mortifying Emotional Moments, and I title it Soggy Napkin Note. The last selfie I posted in there was of me on the day I graduated college. My perfectly made up face is happy ... relieved. I called that one: Sallie Mae Can Suck It. — Tarryn Fisher

It often felt like God had merely let me into a foyer where I could hear others playing my note in another room, with no way to get to the music. And that's really what I wanted to do. I wanted to play my note. I wanted to do the thing that made me feel alive. — Susan E. Isaacs

It wasn't until she was about to press Play, just as she was climbing under her covers, that she noticed it, the envelope tucked beneath the edge of her pillow. She frowned as she reached for it, her fingers lingering for only a moment before pulling it free. The plain white envelope was blank, but she suspected who it was from.
She tore the top apart and unfolded the paper inside, her heart fluttering when she recognized the handwriting.

I miss you like crazy.
Jay

Violet grinned. It was just a note - a single line, really - but even his notes made her pulse race. Ridiculous, she thought as she ran her fingertips over his words, committing them to memory. — Kimberly Derting

Akward, like when a mad aunt starts up about Jesus at the dinner table. As Septimus showed him to the door, the sergeant replaced his hat and said quietly, "A cruel piece of mischief-making, looks like. I reckon it's about time to bury the hatchet against Fritz. All a filthy business, but there's no need for pranks like this. I'd keep it under your hat, the note. Don't want to encourage copycats." He shook hands with Septimus and made his way up the long, gum-lined drive. Back in his study, Septimus put a hand on Hannah's shoulder. "Come on, girlie, chin up. Mustn't let this get the better of you. — M.L. Stedman

Note for Americans and other city-dwelling life-forms: the rural British, having eschewed central heating as being far too complicated and in any case weakening moral fiber, prefer a system of piling small pieces of wood and lumps of coal, topped by large, wet logs, possibly made of asbestos, into small, smoldering heaps, known as "There's nothing like a roaring open fire is there?" Since none of these ingredients are naturally inclined to burn, underneath all this they apply a small, rectangular, waxy white lump, which burns cheerfully until the weight of the fire puts it out. These little white blocks are called firelighters. No one knows why. — Terry Pratchett

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping. — Jean Cocteau

Author's Note
This is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up.
Neither novels or their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.
I appreciate your cooperation in this matter. — John Green

I made a note on my phone to create a Swiss Army Dillo but spell-check changed it to "Create a Swiss Army Dildo," which frankly just seems painful and excessive. — Jenny Lawson

The Egyptologist Dr. Eva Eggebrecht writes in this respect: "The contemporary silence about the construction of the pyramids becomes incomprehensible if we recall that the necropolises were not deathly silent cities of secrecy.... Sacrifices were made, priests came and went.... None of them left as much as a note which would answer even a single question about the construction of the pyramids."11 — New Page Books

The door opened. She looked in the mirror and suppressed a curse. Slipping in behind some tourists, that winged shadow was back again. Karou rose and made for the bathroom, where she took the note that Kishmish had come to deliver.
Again it bore a single word. But this time the word was Please. — Laini Taylor

I made a mental note to put a safety label on my scalp: WARNING, TOP STEP IS NOT FOR STANDING. — Rick Riordan

I was selling real estate at the time, in Pacific Palisades, California, so imagine that: getting a note and a bottle of champagne from Jack Nicholson when I'd barely made a dime as an actor. It really kept me going. — Kurt Fuller

Anais: 'I made a note to ask you why I am obsessed with a few persons only. Why are my devotions so concentrated on a few people? I do not spread out as Henry does.' Dr. Allendy: 'Yes, exactly, it is a bad sign. You do not really confide in many people, then they do not know you, and then you quickly surmise they do not understand and love you. On the few people you feel connected with, you pour a lavish devotion. This must cease. In love, too, one must relinquish to really love. You cannot admit rivalry. The more broadly and expansively you love, without exclusiveness, the more you reach the mystic whole, the larger sense of love, the less individualistic, the more universal love. — Anais Nin

It is not unreasonable to assume that the works of God, their existence and preceding non-existence, are the result of His wisdom, but we are unable to understand many of the ways of His Wisdom in His works. On this principle the whole Law of Moses is based; it begins with this principle: "And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gen. i. 31); and it ends with this principle: "The Rock, perfect is His work" (Deut. xxxii. 4). Note it. — Maimonides

A side note, if I may. Yes, we're all responsible for our own lives and our individual walk with Christ. But I think a certain responsibility also falls on those who are called to preach and teach. For hundreds of years far too many men and women who have preached to us and taught us God's Word have taken the most important message in all of history and made it dry as sawdust. They've made the Living Word of Life so parched and tasteless it's a wonder anyone still listens. — Diane Moody

So in addition to a feisty new Black Court partner in the war dance between the Council and the Vampire Courts, I also got angry lust bunny movies stars, deadly curses, and a thoroughly embarrassing job as my investigative cover.
Oh, and bean curd pizza, which is just wrong.
What a mess.
I made a mental note: The next time I saw Thomas, I was going to punch him right in the nose. — Jim Butcher

And while he waited in the castle court,
The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang
Clear through the open casement of the hall,
Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,
Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,
Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form;
So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;
And made him like a man abroad at morn
When first the liquid note beloved of men
Comes flying over many a windy wave
To Britain, and in April suddenly
Breaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red,
And he suspends his converse with a friend,
Or it may be the labour of his hands,
To think or say, 'There is the nightingale;'
So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,
'Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me. — Alfred Tennyson

He was struck by what a glorious and fearless animal Blue Sargent was, and he made a mental note to tell her that very thing, if she didn't drown getting whatever the second thing was. — Maggie Stiefvater

The paper was made in Bohemia," I said. "Precisely. And the man who wrote the note is a German. Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence - 'This account of you we have from all quarters received.' A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs. It only remains, therefore, to discover what is wanted by this German who writes upon Bohemian paper and prefers wearing a mask to showing his face. And here he comes, if I am not mistaken, to resolve all our doubts. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Whatever. I can't even imagine having a fiance."
"You probably have one, you know."
I stared at him. "Excuse me?"
"Your dad is a really important guy. I'm sure he made a match for you when you were thirteen."
I didn't even want to get into that. The thought that there was some warlock out there who was planning on making me his missus one day was too much to handle. What if he was here at Hecate? What if I knew the guy? Oh God, what if it was that kid with bad breath who sat right behind me in Magical Evolution?
I made a mental note to ask my mom about all of this as soon as I decided to speak to her again. — Rachel Hawkins

Indeed, the case very often such, by the seeming calls of Providence, as made it extremely difficult for him to do more than his strength would admit of. Yea, his circumstances and the business of his mission ... were such that great fatigues and hardships were altogether inevitable. — Jonathan Edwards

The registering of doubts hath two excellent uses: the one, that it saveth philosophy from errors and falsehoods; when that which is not fully appearing is not collected into assertion, whereby error might draw error, but reserved in doubt: the other, that the entry of doubts are as so many
suckers or sponges to draw use of knowledge; insomuch as that which, if doubts had not preceded, a man should never have advised, but passed it over without note, by the suggestion and solicitation of doubts, is made to be attended and applied. — Francis Bacon

There was a sweetness in my voice I found nauseating. I made a note to myself never to have children. Or at least not helpless children. — Tod Goldberg

The most successful critics are always scribbling things in their programs, largely because it gives them an important and industrious air. Also, it is interesting to try to figure out what you've written afterward. Last week, for instance, I made a very helpful note during the second act of a drama called "They Walk Alone." "Lanchstr get face stuck 1 these nights awful if," it seemed to say. — Wolcott Gibbs

She told me later that she had made a kind of note of me in her mind, as, scanning the shelf for a particular book, one will sometimes have one's attention caught by another, take it down, glance at the title page and saying "I must read that, too, when I've the time," replace it and continue the search. — Evelyn Waugh

I don't want to get too dippy about all this. If you take the view of the scientist and everything is in a state of vibration, then every note is a vibration, which has a certain frequency, and you know that if you put 40 beats into a frequency it's going to be the same note every time. You take that into infrasound and people can be made to be sick, actually killed. Taking it the other way, not to be too depressing, what about euphoria, etc., and what about consciousness being totally ... no, I won't go into that one. Time warps. — Jimmy Page

Megan noisily sucked in air for a scream that froze in her lungs. The cat stood in front of the open fire escape window, tail twitching, eyes focused intently on her face. Cursing inwardly at the stupidity of leaving the window open even a little bit, she made a mental note to never do it again ... if she lived.
The sheer size of the body under that sleek black coat was breathtaking, not to mention the power evident in those muscles. Megan whimpered as she caught sight of the sharp claws just visible on its feet. "Holy crap, someone up there has a really sick sense of humor. When I said I should get a cat, this is not what I meant!" she whispered. The cat snorted and her heart lodged in her throat. — Cait Miller

I don't make notes for myself because I either lose them or they make no sense to me at all. I once found a piece of paper with the note: 'everything.' Apparently I made a note to myself not to forget everything! — Aleksandar Hemon

The marriage-pipes sounded, and the mild autumn sun streamed round us. But Rahmun sat in the little Calcutta lane, and saw before him the barren mountains of Afghanistan. I took out a bank-note and gave it to him, saying: "Go back to your own daughter, Rahmun, in your own country, and may the happiness of your meeting bring good fortune to my child!" Having made this present, I had to curtail some of the festivities. I could not have the electric lights I had intended, nor the military band, and the ladies of the house were despondent at it. But to me the wedding-feast was all the brighter for the thought that in a distant land a long-lost father met again with his only child. — Rabindranath Tagore

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. It's pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the note orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to harken to the sound and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observes that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as in confessed revery or meditation — Edgar Allan Poe

Side note: invalid. Whoever invented that word, and made it the same word as not-valid? That person sucked. — Maria Dahvana Headley

It struck me tonight how music mirrors life. Fleeting ephemeral moments, made up of beauty, sadness, joy, hope and despair. Melodies which are written in both major and minor keys. Flowing and fleeting. You can't hold onto it, or keep it from changing. Our emotions possess the evanescence of a note. — Virginia Burges

Curran spared me half a second of his hard stare. "Even if you thought I was in the Guild, what did you think I was doing while the giant was tearing it up? Did you think I was sitting on my hands?" "I thought you might be injured." He looked at me. "We've met, you and I?" I deliberately took a big step back. "What?" he growled. "I'm making room for your ego." "Fine. I should've left a note!" "You should've." "Answer me this, did you hesitate at all or did you see the giant, go 'Wheee!' and run toward it?" "She ran toward it," Juke quipped. "He was biting people in half." "I rest my case," Curran said. "A note wouldn't have made any difference." Note or not, I didn't care. I was just happy he was alive. — Ilona Andrews

With a shrug, he grabbed the laundry soap out of the basket by his feet, figuring that she'd never miss it, and poured the soap in the washing machine. "Oops," he sighed, when he realized that he'd used the last of the soap. Not really caring, he tossed the now empty container back on the basket as he made a mental note to pick up another bottle for his little neighbor when he went to the grocery store later. — R.L. Mathewson

Then his gaze shifted to the wild bush sprouting from her head. "Wow. Did I do that to your hair?" He looked oddly pleased at the thought.
Rylann made a mental note to throw a flat iron in her purse the next time she had sex in the shower with a billionaire ex-con. Not that there was
going to be a next time. "Not all of us are lucky enough to have freakishly perfect, shampoo-commercial hair. This is what happens when I get wet."
His expression turned wicked. "I know exactly what happens when you get wet, counselor."
Yep, she'd walked right into that one. — Julie James

There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No-one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life. -Laura Brown- — Michael Cunningham

I have known some grim bells, with not a single joyous note in the whole peal, so forced to hurry for a human festival, with their harshness made light of, as though the Bishop of Hereford had again been forced to dance in his boots by a merry highwayman. — Alice Meynell

There was, however, a sticky note on the mirror.
Gassy? Payback's a bitch, honey.
She laughed and dropped the note into the bottom drawer with the others she'd collected. They amused her too much to throw away and sometimes she'd pull one out and reread it. But that made her feel like some kind of lovesick teenager, so she closed the door and continued the search. — Shannon Stacey

This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of his vital desires, and, therefore, of his personality; and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence. These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Lady Placida smiled. "History seldom takes note of serendipity when it records events. And from what I have heard, I suspect an argument could be made that you very much did earn the title."
"Many women have earned titles, Your Grace. It doesn't seem to have been a factor in whether or not they actually received them."
Lady Placida laughed. "True enough. But perhaps that is beginning to change." She offered her hands. "It is a distinct pleasure to meet you, Steadholder. — Jim Butcher

(A man who traffics in words, I thought, should come up with better ones than that.) The note felt toxic; it left a funny taste in my mouth. Metallic, like lead paint, or the prodrome of a migraine. When had he written it? And why? Maybe someone else had done it for him. While I'd had my back turned, had he just been pretending to write? Everything about it made me ill. And then there was what the note said. What — Alena Graedon

Much of the colony's musical experimenting was, quite consciously, concerned with what might be called "time span." What was the briefest note that the mind could grasp - or the longest that it could tolerate without boredom? Could the result be varied by conditioning or by the use of appropriate orchestration? Such problems were discussed endlessly, and the arguments were not purely academic. They had resulted in some extremely interesting compositions. But it was in the art of the cartoon film, with its limitless possibilities, that New Athens had made its most successful experiments. The hundred years since the time of Disney had still left much undone in this most flexible of all mediums. On the purely realistic side, results could be produced indistinguishable from actual photography - much to the contempt of those who were developing the cartoon along abstract lines. — Arthur C. Clarke

I know this sounds ridiculous," he spoke solemnly, lacing his fingers in my hair. "But sometimes I feel like I'm caught in your gravity. And no matter where I am, anywhere in the world, if I wrote 'I love you' on a note, and made a paper airplane, and threw it into the breeze...it would still find you. My words couldn't escape you, any more than I can." (Ryan) — Dan Skinner

Lloyd cut his eyes at Dior's dad and made a mental note to kill him good and slow, like maybe beat his ass with a hammer, cut his shriveled up balls off. Both — Leo Sullivan

It was unnerving, the way she could go from cool efficiency to sarcastic to sweet within the space of thirty seconds. I found it very manipulative and controlling. It put the other person constantly on-guard. And it was extremely intimidating because you never knew when she was going to snap. I made a mental note to refine these skills within myself. — Augusten Burroughs

Moist made a mental note: envelopes with a stamp already on, and a sheet of folded paper inside them: Instant Letter Kit, Just Add Ink! That was an important rule of any game: always make it easy for people to give you money. — Terry Pratchett

3. Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans; [Perhaps the word "balk" falls short of expressing the full force of the Chinese word, which implies not an attitude of defense, whereby one might be content to foil the enemy's stratagems one after another, but an active policy of counter-attack. Ho Shih puts this very clearly in his note: "When the enemy has made a plan of attack against us, we must anticipate him by delivering our own attack first."] the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; [Isolating him from his allies. We must not forget that Sun Tzu, in speaking of hostilities, always has in mind the numerous states or principalities into which the China of his day was split up.] the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field; [When he is already at full strength.] and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities. 4. The rule is, not to besiege walled cities if it can possibly be avoided. — Sun Tzu

So, who's going to tell Mrs Beale she's got a month to plan a wedding feast ?"
Hell's fire. Mrs Beale was a marvelous cook. She also had what he considered an unnatural relationship with her meat cleaver. Since he'd inherited SaDiablo Hall, he had gained a finer appreciation of why his father had stayed away from anything to do with the kitchen unless cornered. The woman was downright scary at times.
The fact that she and Beale, the Hall's butler, were happily married was something he tried not to think about because it made him wonder things about Beale he'd rather not wonder.
"If we both went to Amdarh, we could just write her a note," Jaenelle said.
He looked at Jaenelle. She looked at him.
"Good idea," he said. — Anne Bishop

This core concept is so fundamental to her life that she even had a custom grand piano made where the keys aren't black and white - they're green and red. As a side note, do you think it's a coincidence that Christmas' colors are red and green? Christmas, as the consumer holiday, is the epitome of that point where fear meets greed. December 25th is the high holy day of chaos. — Jarod Kintz

Her eyes met his, and he smiled, the Cole Masten smile that unlocked every door. She didn't smile back. Shit. Everything was falling to hell, including his smile. He made a mental note to have Justin - to have someone - make him a dentist appointment. To practice in the mirror this evening and make sure that everything was working right. Maybe it was her. Maybe she was gay. — Alessandra Torre

As he scribbled his odds and ends, he made a note reaffirming his belief that art always serves beauty, and beauty is delight in form, and form is the key to organic life, since no living thing can exist without it, so that every work of art, including tragedy, expresses the joy of existence. — Boris Pasternak

I was interested in writing about gender in this future world where progress has not only halted but turned backward. On another note, sometimes the personal is not so politically correct, and what we are turned on by can't be made to behave. — Edan Lepucki

I made a note to talk to him about soft drinks. Those beverages are not healthy.

from counting by 7s (not listed in drop-down) — Holly Goldberg Sloan

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done . . . 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world . . . Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak in time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, and not to yield. — Dan Simmons

My reflections amount to a love story that is mostly made up, from memories that are mostly false, between people who were mainly not there. The things for which she was not there have her in them now more deeply because of her absence, and her effect on my way of seeing them. Anytime I note her absence from a thing, she arrives at once, as if summoned, entrenching herself more deeply than she exists in my memories of times when she was there, so that time, the sequence of what really happened, seems to curve around her. — Olivia Sudjic

I can't believe that we have reached the end of everything. The red dust is frightening. The carbon dioxide is real. Water is expensive. Bio-tech has created as many problems as it has fixed, but we're here, we're alive, we're the human race, we have survived wars and terrorism and scarcity and global famine, and we have made it back from the brink, not once but many times. History is not a suicide note - it's a record of our survival. — Jeanette Winterson

You' re Benjamin Ripley, aren't you?"
"Uh... no." It was worth a shot.
And for half a second it almost seemed to work. The assassin hesitated, slightly confused, then asked, "Then who are you?"
"Jonathan Monkeywarts" I winced. It had been the first name to popped into my head. I made a mental note to be more prepared next time this happened. — Stuart Gibbs

You ever watch It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown?" Deuce asked. "Stupid Fucker makes me laugh."
I decided, I too, really liked that stupid fucker Charlie Brown and made a mental note to watch everything featuring Charlie Brown as soon as I got home. — Madeline Sheehan

With the world securely in order, Dain was able to devote the leisurely bath time to editing his mental dictionary. He removed his wife from the general category labeled "Females" and gave her a section of her own. He made a note that she didn't find him revolting, and proposed several explanations: (a) bad eyesight and faulty hearing, (b)a defect in a portion of her otherwise sound intellect, (c) an inherited Trent eccentricity, or (d) an act of God. Since the Almighty had not done him a single act of kindness in at least twenty-five years, Dain thought it was about bloody time, but he thanked his Heavenly Father all the same, and promised to be as good as he was capable of being. — Loretta Chase

Come, Spirits she murmured; and was instantly fortified by a sense of the presence of the things that aren't there. There were the beautiful drowned statues, there were the glens and hills of an undiscovered country; there were divine musical notes, which, struck high up in the air, made one's heart beat with delight at the assurance that the world of things that aren't there was splendidly vigorous and far more real than the other. She felt that one never spoke of the things that mattered, but carried them about, until a note of music, or a sentence or a sight, joined hands with them. — Virginia Woolf

Two applesauce shots, please."
I gaped at her. "Shots? God, what are we, in college?"
She moved her wavy brown hair out of her eyes. "No, we don't have to be in college to have what I'm sure"- she looked at the bartender- "will be a fantastically prepared, perhaps overflowing shot."
He laughed with a shake of his head. "You got it."
"It's delicious," she said to me, "Goldschlager and something else. I don't remember. But it totally tastes like applesauce."
"Why would anyone want to drink applesauce?" But I was already wondering if it could be reduced to a glaze for pork chops, and made a mental note to find out what was in it. — Beth Harbison

Aunt Zelda had written her note on special paper that she had made from pressed cabbage leaves. — Angie Sage

It is of great importance to note these meteors, even the small ones, as very little is yet known of them; and every observation, if carefully made, will some day help to show what they are. — William John Wills

The idea of going back to basketball drills made her stomach tighten, but she stood up on her tiptoes and leaned into Jay, whispering against his cheek. "I got your note last night. Would've been better if I'd have found you in my bed instead."
Jay groaned and grabbed her by the shoulders. There was the hint of accusation buried behind his breathy chuckle as he set her away from him. "You're playing with fire, Vi. You shouldn't tease me at school. Besides, I think if I hid in your room, your father - check that, your mother - would skin me alive."
Violet heard the coach shouting her name, and she knew she'd be getting a demerit for slacking off. But she didn't care.
She flashed him her most wolfish smile. "Next time, you should totally take that chance. It could've been fun," she promised before sauntering away. — Kimberly Derting

Darius didn't have any trouble finding the Street Cats building. It was a cozy-looking square brick building with big front windows crowded with cat stuff. I made a mental note to pick up a little something for Nala from their gift shop. My cat was grumpy enough without her thinking that I'd been cheating on her (translation: I would smell like a zillion other cats) and hadn't even brought her a present. — P.C. Cast

Lady Gregory, in a note to her play Aristotle's Bellows, writes:
Aristotle's name is a part of our folklore. The wife of one of our labourers told me one day as a bee buzzed through the open door, Aristotle of the Books was very wise, but the bees got the best of him in the end. He wanted to know how they did pack the comb, and he wasted the best part of a fortnight watching them doing it. Then he made a hive with a glass cover on it and put it over them, and thought he would watch them, but when he put his eye to the glass, they had covered it with wax, so that it was as black as the pot, and he was as blind as before. He said he was never rightly killed until then. The bees beat him that time surely. — Hilda M. Ransome

She was like defenceless Nature, that withers in the blast because it has shelter neither of God nor of men; human beings do not give one another shelter; and God? We shall see, when in the end we are dead of consumption. Perhaps the Almighty had made a note of all that she had had to suffer. All the same she felt that evening that she was not too old once more to view the future in a dream; in a new dream. To be able to look forward is to live. — Halldor Laxness

There are few writers of note, of any country or of any age, from whom quotations might not be made in proof of the love with which they regarded Nature. — Jacques-Henri Bernardin De Saint-Pierre

For mile after mile the same melodic phrase rose up in my memory. I simply couldn't get free of it. Each time it had a new fascination for me. Initially imprecise in outline, it seemed to become more and more intricately woven, as if to conceal from the listener how eventually it would end. This weaving and re-weaving became so complicated that one wondered how it could possibly be unravelled; and then suddenly one note would resolve the whole problem, and the solution would seem yet more audacious than the procedures which had preceded, called for, and made possible its arrival; when it was heard, all that had gone before took on a new meaning, and the quest, which had seemed arbitrary, was seen to have prepared the way for this undreamed-of solution. — Claude Levi-Strauss

We talk of strong personalities, and they are strong, until the not-every-day when we see them as we might see one woman alone in a desert, and know that all the strength we thought we knew was only courage, only her lone song echoing among the stones; and then at last when we have understood this and made up our minds to hear the song and admire its courage and its sweetness, we wait for the next note and it does not come. The last word, with its pure tone, echoes and fades and is gone, and we realize - only then - that we do not know what it was, that we have been too intent on the melody to hear even one word. We go then to find the singer, thinking she will be standing where we last saw her. There are only bones and sand and a few faded rags. — Gene Wolfe

Public employee unions, in their defense, say politicians have unfairly made them into simplistic bogeymen, responsible for problems that have myriad causes. Not all government workers receive generous pensions, they note. — Charles Duhigg

I saw her note the way I hovered over the various ethnicities on the form. First the 'white' box, then to the airspace over the 'black' box, a kind of momentary hesitation, a protest of stillness, a staring into the abyss of everything I did not know about myself. She, like me, was made of halves. — Olivia Sudjic

Yes, word had gotten around about my amusing little defeathering trick (note: made the chicken naked). Apparently we couldn't just eat the poor thing and be done with it. Apparently we had to knit cunning lil' sweaters for it so it could squawk around the yard, feeling fancy. — Cate Tiernan

Well, the natives seemed fairly friendly, so I decided to stay the night. I made a mental note never to seem fairly friendly to an explorer. If you do, he always decides to stay the night. — P.G. Wodehouse

If you have someone in your life that you are grateful for - someone to whom you want to write another heartfelt, slanted, misspelled thank you note - do it. Tell them they made you feel loved and supported. That they made you feel like you belonged somewhere and that you were not a freak. Tell them all of that. Tell them today. — Lisa Jakub

He updated his report, doing his best to tune out the two men who staggered into the police station, dragging each other.
"I want you to arrest this idiot bastard," the taller one shouted, face contorted with rage. "He shit on my front porch!"
Your dog shits all over my yard every day," the other one countered shoving.
Calm down, please," Leila said when they reached reception.
The tall one thumped a fist on the counter. "I want to make a police report. I stepped in that shit!"
Chase checked out the floor behind them, the questionable footprints. Made a mental note to walk around them when he left. — Dana Marton

Smokin' at the Half Note is the absolute greatest jazz-guitar album ever made. It is also the record that taught me how to play. — Pat Metheny

As much as I didn't want to, I had to read Jag's note. I pulled it out of my back pocket. His handwriting still made my breath catch, but when I opened it, I wanted to cry.

The paper contained two words: Fly, babe.

I shredded it into little pieces. Fly? The stupid boy wanted me to fly? I'd fly off the handle when I caught up to him. Then he'd see me fly. — Elana Johnson

A personal note to the Founding Fathers: We're sorry. We blew it. You made it possible for us to live free and we blew it. We've given up nearly every personal liberty in the name of a false sense of security sold to the masses by the same type of maniacal government about which you warned us and against which you fought so bravely. We now have to ask permission to take a leak on an airline flight. We never deserved you. — Philip D. Murphy

When we run out of them upstairs, I've been known to appropriate some from our greenroom, pocketing a few with one hand as I smile and greet our guests with the other. One time, Dave Zinczenko of 'Eat this, Not That!' fame, busted me in the act. The cookies apparently fall in the 'not that' category. I made a note of it. — Lester Holt

The lesson of the last year is this: foreign policy can't be managed through the politics of personality, and our President would do well to take note of an observation John F. Kennedy made once he was in office - that all of the world's problems aren't his predecessor's fault. — Sarah Palin

Nathaniel kissed me and then Micah good-bye. Normally he would have kissed Micah more thoroughly, because he might not get another chance for hours, but we'd started doing less of the tonsil-cleaning kisses in front of Matthew - not just between the men, but between me and the men, or anyone and anyone. Why? Because Matthew liked to imitate, and he'd gotten sent home with a note from preschool. We'd been left having to explain that certain kinds of kissing was grownup kissing, and he had to be a grownup to do it. He'd accepted our reasoning and filed it away on the same list as driving a car, drinking liquor, or being able to lift weights. It made perfect sense to him that it was just one more thing he wasn't old enough to do, yet. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Dammit, Billy. You had one job. One. Job.

I moved my glare to my brother. "May I have a word?"

"Now?" he asked, looking and sounding almost delighted. Of note, delighted for Billy was imperturbably stoic for everyone else.

"Yes. Now." I bared my teeth in a grin.

Billy's eyes moved between mine and I cursed his fastidious grooming. He'd taken extra care with the beard trimmer this afternoon. He also smelled like a profligate, cologne, and unrequited infatuation.

My older brother turned and whispered something into Jennifer's ear. I stiffened, barely restraining the urge to grab him by his shirt collar and yank him down the hall.

But I didn't. Instead I made a list of all his most treasured possessions for . . . reasons. — Penny Reid

Virgil reached into the wool cap that contained his dreads, stuffed so full as to give him the appearance, Ted thought, of the Great Kazoo on the latter years of The Flintstones or a Jiffy Pop container expanded to its max. (Ted made a mental note that these are not bad similes and hoped he could find them on a rainy day.) — David Duchovny

This is the way in which he (poet) did his work. He used to go out with a pencil and a tablet and note what struck him...and make a picture out of it...But Nature does not allow an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil behind, and gone forth in a meditative spirit; and, on a later day, he should have embodied in verse not all that he had noted but what he best remembered of the scene; and he would have then presented us with its soul, and not with the mere visual aspect of it. — William Wordsworth

Look, Father, I don't think you're being straight with me. I want to join your Church and I'm going to join your Church, but you're holding too much back. I've had a long talk with a Catholic-a very pious, well-educated one, and I've learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that's the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I'll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d'you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a Cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put in a pound note with someone's name on it, they get sent to hell. I don't say there mayn't be a good reason for all this, but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself. — Evelyn Waugh

Our kiss was niticlimactic. It wasn't that the kiss was bad, but it was just a note of punctuation in our long conversation, a parenthetical remark made in order to assure each other of a deeply felt agreement, a mutual offer of companionship, which is so much more rare than sexual passion or even love. — Nicole Krauss

I'm a compulsive note-taker, and I used to feel self-conscious about pulling out my little notebook and taking notes during a casual conversation. Then I noticed that people really seemed to enjoy it; the fact that I was taking notes made their remarks seem particularly insightful or valuable. Now I don't hold myself back. — Gretchen Rubin

I you look at the drawings of aliens made by people who believe that Earth is under saucer attack, you'll quickly note that most of these invaders fit the Tinseltown mold. But you have to admit: the grays are highly anthropomorphic. — Seth Shostak

There is no pleasure like leaving
before dawn in last night's clothes.
Light snow or thick dew in the grass-
no one's passed this way before.
The note you left needed only a few words,
no explanation where lies could creep in.
Your eyes, blinked clear, won't squint or glance off,
it's the stars that turn their faces away.
He or she is or is not the one you love
and you cannot stay. The dark
turns to mist and the mist cannot stay
but for once there's no need for alarm.
You're getting a good head start.
Maybe the world isn't made of dust.
Maybe you won't make another mistake.
You're as young as you'll ever be. — Dean Young

As soon as I was out of sight of that house I opened my envelope, and saw that it contained money! My opinion of those people changed, I can tell you! I lost not a moment, but shoved note and money into my vest pocket, and broke for the nearest cheap eating house. Well, how I did eat! When at last I couldn't hold any more, I took out my money and unfolded it, took one glimpse and nearly fainted. Five millions of dollars! Why, it made my head swim. — Anonymous

Aha!"
My chaperone looked at me like I should aha! back, but all I could manage was a quiet "ah." I made a note to ha later. — Lemony Snicket

Is Darling still awake?" She stepped back so that he could see Ryn. "He is." Hauk headed for the bed. "Fain sent me a note about what's going on with the locals. I'm here with backup." Darling growled. "Not helpless, people." "Not people, human," Hauk said in an exasperated tone. Darling made an obscene gesture at him. "I thought I got rid of you when I left the hospital." Hauk clutched his chest as if those words wounded him. "Aww now, Dar, you're going to hurt my feelings." "You don't have feelings." "True. Just think of me like a bad STD. I always show up at the worst time." He glanced back at Zarya. "So much for your hot date, huh?" Darling groaned. "You are ever a pain in my ass, Hauk. Should I reset the timers on my explosives in the city? Might give the Resistance pause if they think I'm going to take them or their families with me." Ryn — Sherrilyn Kenyon